Post-Ramadan Realities

The month of Ramadan has ended, and so to has my absence from commenting on community affairs here in the Washington D.C. region. Ramadan is always a good 30-day self reflection period that helps build character, patience, and thankfulness in those who participate in it the whole way through.  But Ramadan is over now, and so it is time for us to consider some Post-Ramadan Realities.

PEPCO customers still are without power.

As of this morning, nearly 2,000 people in the PEPCO region still do not have power. Crews have been called up from as far as Texas and Florida to help with power restoration, and are working 16 hour days since the winds died down on Sunday. My family was without power for 36 hours. Since we run on well power, that’s a serious problem. PEPCO’s tree trimming (‘vegetation management’) program has made a distinct difference in cutting in half the three grim days in the soaring heat and humidity my family endured last year during summer storm outages.  But nonetheless, PEPCO needs to pay to put cables underground themselves, considering according to http://wallstcheatsheet.com they posted a higher than expected profit of $94 million this quarter. Also, a note: why did we not spent some of our stimulus revenue set aside for infrastructure in helping to match funds with public services to put these cables underground? #HoldAnnapolisResponsible

The ICC is not working out the way democratic Governor Martin O’Malley had hoped for. He is largely credited with being the man behind the tolls placed on the Inter-County-Connector that’s slotted to be fully complete either at the end of this year, or the beginning of the next. One of the reasons I hope the Mayan calendar isn’t spot-on about 2012 is so that I can spend more than a few months driving to my favorite kabab & haleem place, the Food Factory, in College Park without emptying nearly a quarter of my gas tank in gridlock and delays on the I-495. The truth of matter remains though, that even with MoCo politicians urging all the way back in 2009 for the governor to institute lower tolls on the ICC, he decided to keep them high, anyway. The result: no one uses the ICC. Well, not many people use it. And our traffic hasn’t improved.

The problem is that gas prices, while coming down in recent weeks thanks to the near-end of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, are still high enough to hurt most fixed income families. That means cutting the ride from where I live to Georgia Avenue using the ICC and paying anywhere from 1.20 to 2.90 roundtrip is just not feasible. To add to that, I have to pay 30 dollars a month to E-Z pass regardless of whether I use the highway or not. In an economy where everyone except the governor is making less money, that’s a gas tank full, or your monthly church contribution. Aren’t public roads supposed to be used by the public? Why the elitism, Annapolis?

This might (hopefully) change when the highway is complete, and connects us directly to US-1 in Laurel and I-95, uniting the Maryland D.C. Suburbs (finally) after 40 years of talking about bringing us all together. That means, next Ramadan: I’ll be opening my fasts with some chicken tikkas @ Food Factory (insha’Allah).

We are now Minority Majority.

That’s right people. I-and I hope you like Kimchii and Blancos & Muranos, because Montgomery Country is now a minority-majority county. Kababs will also add protein to future diets here in the county, by the way. With the rise of minority-majority in the seventh richest county by income in the country, we can say with pride that America and Maryland are working towards social and financial equity between majority and minority ethnicities in the country. This too, on the eve of 9/11 shows us just how diverse and tolerant the fabric of our society really is. It also has huge implications for how we draw electoral districts in Maryland, which is what the General Assembly will be doing in September.

Keep an eye out folks, I’ll have more posts like this from now on.

Eid Mobarik and Happy Wednesday!

 

BBC News – Australias New South Wales police get new burka powers

BBC News – Australias New South Wales police get new burka powers.

 

This is something I fervently support. In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden is purported has escaped detection by travelling in burqa. Other lead terrorists have used the burqa to escape authorities and elude capture. The burqa is not a religious garment, and should not be treated as one at the present time. When burqas were introduced, they were designed to be a final measure of protection for a woman in a dangerous world from rape and molestation. Today, those fears do not exist. We should reassess the need for us to drape anyone in the one-cloth garment.

Baseball

If all beauty had one source
I would know it temporal to be you.

Ariella

The beauty that is your skin pales when laid next to your eyes.
Butterflies were made to dazzle in spring,
You were made to scorch us with love everyday in between.

-Hamza

Freedom of Press in Egypt

Talia: A Poem

I wrote this for my buddy earlier today. Don’t get any ideas people, we’re just friends. Talia has a habit of coming to me all the time for advice on the Mideast, with pretty hilarious results. Just so she doesn’t think I mean half the mean things I say to her, I wrote these lines. Enjoy!

Talia

Two sparrows are in awe of not each other,
but of the life changing beauty in front of them;
You.
Truth isn’t beholden to lesser things
but I find myself memorized by you.
To love, to live, all becomes irrelevant
just as long as your company never fades away.

Be yourself, and talk your worries. How else will a bird take flight?

Teaching Mullahs Facebook: Social Media in the Mosque

Last Sunday, the Civilizations Exchange & Cooperation Foundation invited me to give a seminar to a group of Imams from Morocco on social media and social networking. I had for a very longtime wanted to introduce social media to local religious leaders to help counter both extremism and the troubling trend of amoralization amongst religious communities’ youth both here and abroad.

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI issued a proclomation asking that Priests engage their flocks and others through Facebook and and blogs in order to foster an online presence younger Catholics can turn to to be inspired to be more robust in their faith and morals. In the same vein, many Jewish and Muslim religious figures in America have also taken to the internet.

But most of the Muslim World does not have religious scholars who reach across the age and communication barrier so readily. That’s important because, it is a Muslim majority country, not the pluralistically secular US that has the most active blogs in the world. That country is Iran, whose population is 2/3 under the age of 30 as of 2007.

***

Morocco is a realtively young population in an old land. There are about 30 million Morrocans. The median age is 29 years, and the ruling monarch, HRH King Mohamed VI is about the same age as social-media savvy President Barack Obama. The King has over 70,000 likes on the most popular Facebook Page about him.

When I sat down with the Imams, I knew that social media might be a tough sell. These were after all, trained religious professionals with graduate degrees in a faithful tradition 1,400 years old, with very little change in between those years. So I decided to focus on the most troubling issues facing all Muslim societies: token sexualism in the media, spirtual awareness and extremism.

The ‘Zina Monster’

During the seminar, the Imams, half of whom were women, and I talked openly about the serious challenges confronting the Moroccan Mosque. I started by talking about 18 year old Karima El Marough, best known for the unsavory controversy she’s caused as a former underaged prostitute in Italy. Then we talked about recent challenges to Moroccan identity and sexuality, like the French film Rajah, where Moroccan girls as young as 14 are depicted as loose with morals and willing to spend the night with foreign men for a few Euros. Topics like these, I told the Imams, needed to be talked about openly with young men and women to avoid longterm social problems in Morocco and the Muslim World. “The girls need it the most,” I told the women Imams, “because many of them are first generation literate women in their families, and many of them need guidance on moral and social issues they just can’t get at home.”

The Imams readily agreed, and spoke freely about the ‘zina monster’ facing traditional socieities the world over. Zina, a term for fornication and irresponisble sexuality is an ongoing challenge for religious leaders in the Muslim world because of the great emphasis Islam places on chastity before marriage. Many young Muslim girls and women that once they explore their sexuality, they are totally condemned by their community and faith, leaving them scarred when really religious institutions should be there to provide counseling, guidance and when necessary, therapy to those exposed to unwanted sexualization such as rape or molestation. We talked about how Facebook-based support networks in the West, and open dialogue on blogs and online forums could provide Moroccan youth with a space of their own to talk about social issues long thought of as taboo with trained religious professionals.

Spirituality Renewed

Another important trend I discussed with the Imams was the use of social media particularly by Orthodox Jewish spiritualists to help foster spiritualism amongst Jewish youth in America, and how social media tools like Facebook notes and YouTube videos could provide the same avenue to Muslim youth in Morocco. Spiritualism in Islam (‘Sufi Islam’) is treated in the West as a separate entity from traditional Sunni, Shia, and Ibadi denominations; but in reality Sufism is an integral part of traditional Islamic belief and theology, much more so than the rigid rules of Sharia Law. The need to grow one’s faith in God and His Love can be readily achieved by starting conversation online between clerics and youth across the world.

That surprised the Imams. All of them agreed that spirituality was much more a core tenet of Islam than is stereotypically depicted today, but few of them had thought about how important it is for youth to experience spirituality first hand in this day and age of unleashed materialism. I pointed to very clear example of how college students on Birthright to Israel
experience a spiritual and mystical connection to the Jewish homeland, and how many return with a desire to better understand their religion and heritage. I offered the analogy that since sending the entire Muslim world to Mecca this summer was a bit unrealistic, the next best thing we could do for ourselves is talk about the mystical and deep relationship Islam calls for with God.

Extremism: The Salafists Fringe & Winning Hearts and Minds

I ended the seminar with a grave warning: “If you don’t use social media to communicate with your youth, the extremists will and do.”

On YouTube, there’s a video of a Muslim young lady being asked by an extremist why she doesn’t wear a headscarf, which the extremists wrongfully identifies as a hijab (a headscarf is actually part of hijab, which is the catch-all term for dressing modestly). The video goes on for almost 10 minutes, with sloppy editting showing every time the girl is about to make a point, the video is drastically editted to show her as a rambling idiot. Towards the end of the video, the extremist steps in, and begins to whittle away at the girl, whose voice cracked a few times, which leads me to believe she was being bullied to tears in the cut out shots.

I told this example point black to the Imams, and said, “you might want this girl to dress modestly, but does embarassing her to the whole world over video subscribe to either the Islamic values of mercy and respect or of modesty? Her face is plastered on the internet. For good. Imagine this video with 10,000 hits. The producers of it now have a crowd. Imagine if their next video calls on people to commit acts of terror. That one girl lost her respect, and we lost our religion. Use Social Media when you get home, or the extremists will.” That point really sank in.

It is important to note without exception the terrific quality of a lot of the religious material you can find on Facebook and YouTube for the Islamic faith. But it’s not enough. Until every important scholar of Islam is online, talking about day to day issues on their blogs and Facebook Pages, or are tweeting and forming relationships with religious leaders from rival sects and other religions, Islamic theologians’ social media presence will be underserving a religious commmunity in gross need of new avenues for spiritual scholarship and moral guidance.

The Imams and I spent the rest of the afternoon touring a local mosque’s impressive free healthcare clinic, said to be the second largest of its kind in the whole country. At our parting, all of them left with the one thing engrained in their minds: we need to win our youth back, and social media can help.

Ku Klux Klan Says It Doesnt Condone Tea Party or Koran Burning – Culture – GOOD

I’ve lived to see it all when the Ku Klux Klan Says It Doesnt Condone the Tea Party or Koran Burning. Wow. God bless America, where even the worst bigots and racists agree that freedom of religion is inherently an American value.

Fatima Bhutto

YouTube – Frost over the World – Fatima Bhutto.

Love, inshallah – and two cool writers to watch (via Raquel Evita Saraswati)

Really sweet of  the coolest hijabi ever to mention me .

Love, Inshallah: the Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, has been a hot topic on social media – and they’re looking for contributors. Click here if you’re interested. The publisher is a South Asian Muslim woman who recently wrote a post on Phenomenal Women. Check out her blog. Another blogger to watch is Hamza Khan, who reminds us of the legacy of Khadi … Read More

via Raquel Evita Saraswati